A cooked, skinless chicken breast contains roughly 165 calories per 100 grams (3.5 ounces). That number shifts depending on the size of the breast, whether the skin is on, and how you cook it, but it’s the reliable baseline for plain roasted or baked chicken breast without added fat.
Calories by Serving Size
Chicken breasts vary widely in size, so knowing the calories per weight is more useful than calories per “breast.” Here’s what skinless, cooked chicken breast looks like across common portions:
- 3 ounces (84g): about 140 calories
- 4 ounces (113g): about 187 calories
- 6 ounces (170g): about 267 calories
- 8 ounces (227g): about 375 calories
A 3-ounce portion is roughly the size of a deck of cards. Most whole chicken breasts from the grocery store weigh between 6 and 10 ounces raw, which means a single cooked breast typically lands somewhere between 230 and 350 calories once you account for water loss during cooking.
Protein, Fat, and Other Macros
Chicken breast is one of the leanest protein sources available. A 6-ounce cooked skinless breast delivers about 54.5 grams of protein alongside only 6 to 7 grams of fat. That protein-to-calorie ratio is hard to beat: roughly 80% of the calories come from protein, with the rest from fat. Chicken breast contains zero carbohydrates.
Per 100 grams of cooked skinless breast, you’re looking at about 31 grams of protein and 3.6 grams of fat, of which about 1 gram is saturated. This makes it a staple for anyone tracking macros or trying to hit a high protein target without adding excess calories.
Skin-On vs. Skinless
Leaving the skin on adds a meaningful bump in both calories and fat. USDA data shows that a 3-ounce serving of roasted chicken breast with skin contains about 200 calories and 11 grams of fat, compared to roughly 140 calories and 3 grams of fat for the same portion without skin. That’s a 40% increase in calories, almost entirely from fat.
If you roast chicken with the skin on for moisture and flavor, removing the skin before eating gets you most of the way back to the skinless numbers. The fat that renders into the meat during cooking adds a small amount of extra calories, but nothing close to eating the skin itself.
How Cooking Method Changes the Count
Plain roasting, baking, grilling, and poaching all produce similar calorie counts because they don’t add fat. The differences come from what you cook with. Pan-frying in a tablespoon of olive oil adds about 120 calories to the whole breast. Butter, marinades with sugar, breading, and sauces can push a single breast well past 400 calories.
Cooking method does affect the final weight of the meat, which matters if you’re weighing your portions. According to USDA cooking yield data, a roasted or baked chicken breast retains about 72% of its raw weight, meaning a 10-ounce raw breast becomes roughly 7.2 ounces after cooking. Poaching and simmering retain a bit more, around 77%. The calories don’t disappear with the water. All the protein and fat from the raw breast stay in the cooked meat, just concentrated into a smaller, lighter piece.
Raw Weight vs. Cooked Weight
This is where calorie tracking gets confusing. Raw chicken breast has about 120 calories per 100 grams, while cooked has about 165. The chicken didn’t gain calories. It lost water, so the same nutrients are packed into less weight. If you weigh your chicken raw and log it as raw, or weigh it cooked and log it as cooked, you’ll get the same calorie count. Problems happen when you weigh it raw but log cooked values, or vice versa.
A simple rule: if you started with an 8-ounce raw breast, expect it to weigh about 5.7 to 6.2 ounces after cooking. Either way, that breast contains roughly 280 calories regardless of when you put it on the scale.
Quick Reference for Meal Planning
For everyday tracking, these rounded numbers work well for plain cooked skinless chicken breast:
- Per ounce cooked: 46 calories, 9g protein
- Per 100g cooked: 165 calories, 31g protein
- Per ounce raw: 33 calories, 6.5g protein
- Per 100g raw: 120 calories, 23g protein
These numbers assume no added oil, butter, or calorie-containing marinades. If you’re grilling with a light spray of cooking oil, the addition is negligible. If you’re cooking in a pool of olive oil or slathering on barbecue sauce, weigh or measure those separately and add them to your total.